Samsung's 3nm technology: what do we know?

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www.electropages.com, May. 26, 2022 – 

As transistor sizes continue to shrink, Samsung is expected to be the first foundry to roll out 3nm devices. What advantages does transistor size reduction provide, what technology drives Samsung's new process, and when will 3nm be available to the public?

Why transistor size reduction is essential for next-generation technology

Ever since the development of the first electronic components, researchers and engineers alike have strived to reduce the size of electronic parts as much as physically possible. The most obvious advantage to making electronic components smaller is that it allows for designs to be made smaller or for more complex designs to be constructed in the same space. The same applies to semiconductors; by reducing the size of transistors, more transistors can be integrated onto the same area, allowing for more processors, hardware accelerators, and control circuits to be integrated.

However, there are additional advantages to reducing the size of transistors that are somewhat unique to semiconductors. Unlike capacitors and resistors, shrinking the size of transistors minimises the amount of power consumed using smaller switching currents and smaller gate voltages. Furthermore, these smaller voltages and physical sizes also allow for higher operating frequencies, which is especially advantageous for improving single thread processing (i.e., greater instruction throughput).

As such, the latest silicon technologies are generally geared toward processors that rely on either large core counts or low energy operation. It is rare to find standard off-the-shelf microcontrollers, sensors, or bus controllers using such technology as it is unnecessary.

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